ANKENY, Iowa -- Casey's General Stores Inc. is using NitroSecurity's NitroGuard IPS and NitroView Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) solutions to secure its infrastructure and safeguard its business from the increasing threat of network security attacks.
With NitroSecurity, the company is also satisfying several of the mandates required for the Payment Card Industry (PCI) data security standard, the card industry's single approach to safeguarding sensitive data for all major credit card brands. As a result, Casey's is able to maintain operations with [image-nocss] consistent application performance and availability and reduce the expense of time and resources spent on network downtime as a result of security breaches, while addressing several of the dozen PCI compliance mandates, NitroSecurity said.
Securing the infrastructure has become a more critical part of any networked system, as billions of dollars in damages to organizations occur annually through security breaches on networks already protected by firewalls, anti-virus systems and intrusion detection services. These breaches are perpetrated by sophisticated cybercriminals to whom conventional network security devices present no effective protection, with crimes ranging from simple user abuse and harassment to the destruction of a corporation's business data, intellectual property and brand identity. In 2006, several incidents of identity fraud and loss of sensitive customer data have taken place at major retailers, highlighting the continued growth of security attacks and the obligation of each corporation to protect consumer information, said the Portsmouth, N.H.-based tech firm.
Casey's sought a solution to enhance its existing security infrastructure and provide instantaneous response to protect critical online assets from both external and internal cyber exploits.
"NitroView and NitroGuard have enabled us to account for every packet entering our internal network from an untrusted network, said Dan Greenley, an information systems executive at Casey's.
Using an aggregation and correlation engine, NitroGuard IPS and NitroView ESM actively detect, analyze and protect Casey's infrastructure against the threat of network security attacks. Combined, NitroGuard and NitroView use a blend of signature, advanced anomaly detection and security event management and reporting to identify security threats from viruses, worms, denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, spyware and other forms of malware within the network, as well as isolate anomalous network activity before problems can occur.
As a merchant that processes more than six million Visa transactions per year, Casey's is also charged with meeting the Level 1 security standard of PCI compliance. The program is required of all merchants and service providers that store, process or transmit Visa, MasterCard, AMEX and Discover cardholder data, and applies to all payment channels including retail, mail/telephone order and e-commerce. To maintain compliance, Casey's must ensure that its data is secure, reported on in great detail and meet more stringent 'real-time' requirements.
"NitroSecurity solutions have proven to be invaluable for satisfying several of the Payment Card Industry data security standards. Its unbelievably fast query of massive amounts of data greatly simplifies the packet analysis process and easily generates user-friendly reports for management review," added Greenley.
NitroSecurity is a provider of scalable enterprise security solutions for the healthcare, education, financial services, government, retail/hospitality and managed services.
Headquartered in Ankeny, Iowa, Casey's owns and operates nearly 1,400 convenience stores in nine Midwestern states.
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